Considering the fact that Curiosity has already landed and collected enough samples, the next step would be for us to totally consume the resources on mars. This reminds me of the scene in “The Matrix” where humans are compared to a virus that consumes the host and leaves it to die. The most compelling reason for someone to head over to mars is that there must be something that can to be brought back. We are genetically wired to conquer but I wonder if this will involve improving our current state of evolution or lead it its ultimate downfall.

Leaving aside the moral question, which ideally should never be left aside. The natural progression is our current hunger for rare earths will be the key driver. I am not going to elude to the parties who might actually start this race but anyhow this is inevitable.

With this thought in mind I sketch out simple solution that would most likely be achieved in less than a decade. I would be surprised if we actually managed to pull this off in 5 years or less.

Harnessing our moon or Phobos or Deimos might be an interesting approach due possible easier landing. The lower gravity definitely helps. And also would be able to provide possible refueling stations. Now remember that rocket fuel will evolve to harness fuel from these moons or run off rechargable fuel cell which will be available at these stations (think Tesla Battery Swap of today but on a inter planetary scale).

The fact that the material or ore containers can almost be just dropped onto earth will develop “DZones” or drop zones for ore or processed minerals.

Another questions that came to my mind was why not use our Moon to mine rare earths. its closer and also easier to go and come back. Couple of interesting things that I can think of is the lack of an atmosphere which would probably make people less interested in settling and would consider it close to a “Man at Sea” kind of life style. Mars on the other hand would mean a much more closer to home feel. On a lighter side Mars is like America and the land of opportunity while moon is like getting another close colony which isn’t that interesting to most folks.

I wonder if I would in my lifetime, ever get to see the signing of a celestial declaration of independence.

How many of us try to come to a sudden stop at a red light? “Damn I thought I could make it”is the common misconception. Now consider if we managed to tap into this breaking energy at signals into maybe to power the signal or feed to a grid or power the street light. Obviously it would not help for all signals and the next question I had was what about ABS and other anti breaking techniques complicating the process.

I believe all that is just a matter of bringing those variables into fixing the equation on what kind of a system do we employ to harness electricity from these stop and go drivers.

That is the title I actually wanted to give this post. However as this was actually requested in a way by my wife I think this new exercise might not be such a bad idea after all. Recently I’ve started trying to give people a walk in my head with the simple solution to things as per my perspective of how problems should be solved. Basically it is the refusal of accepting standard conventions that brings these thoughts out. I it not that I try to come up with these solutions but rather basic frustrations in systems that gets me into thoughts like these. Couple of simple things like Kevlar tires and the smart shoe devices etc were things that I recently discussed about.

The one thing I realized that I have gotten better at was to get someone to walk along with me in my lane of thought that showed my solution was actually a practical one, basically building a convincing argument. It usually borders science fiction but the only reality check is that the physics usually exists. There are ideas in the world at the level of space odysseys but those are definitely for the more seasoned thinkers. I believe mine are simpler ones and hopefully slightly more practical. I calls these “Futures” on the concept that if any of these actually do happen then it is one of those possible set of parallel universes that have come into existence at that point in time the idea is realized in physical form.

The best way to start is to actually unshackle your brain from current forms of solutions but not from science and reality.